WASHINGTON (AP) – Over the past year, Project 2025 has emerged as a persistent force in the presidential election, its far-right proposals deployed by Democrats as shorthand for what Donald Trump would potentially do with a second term at the White House.

Although the now-president-elect’s campaign vigorously distanced itself from Project 2025—Trump himself said he “didn’t know anything about it”—the Heritage Foundation’s sweeping proposal to gut the workforce and dismantling federal agencies closely aligns with his vision. The architects of the 2025 project came from the ranks of the Trump administration, and senior heritage officials briefed the Trump team.

It is rare for a complex 900-page political book to occupy such a dominant place in a political campaign. But from its think tank beginnings to its viral spread on social media, the rise, fall and potential rise of Project 2025 show the unexpected resilience of politics to illuminate an election year and threaten not only Trump at the top of the list. but Republicans have downvoted in congressional races.

Despite all this, the 2025 project has not disappeared. It exists not only as a policy blueprint for the next administration, but also as a database of some 20,000 job seekers who could occupy the White House and the Trump administration and as an as-yet-unpublished “180-day playbook.” of actions that a new president could implement. First day after inauguration January 20, 2025.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who recently took over the project, seems to be relishing the fight and is moving full steam ahead.

“Rest assured that we will not give up,” Roberts wrote in an email to supporters this summer. “We will not back down.”

How Project 2025 was born

When Project 2025 began in April 2023, it promised to “dismantle the administrative state” by proposing personnel and policies that could serve as a road map for the next conservative president.

Former Trump administration officials working on the project said they wanted to avoid the mistakes of the first Trump in the White House by ensuring the next Republican president would be prepared to have the personnel and policies needed to implement implements its campaign priorities.

“There is a desire to really get started,” Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2023.

Centered on the Heritage Foundation, the venerable conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the book’s concept dated back to an earlier version, his Reagan-era “Mandate for Leadership,” which was considered so popular in the White House that copies were installed on desks to guide the new presidency.

At least 100 conservative groups, many with Trump administration alumni, have come together to develop proposals for a broad restructuring of the federal government — ranging from appointing more political appointees to the Justice Department to the reassignment of civil servants from law enforcement to manage illegal immigration. to the dismantling of the Ministry of Education.

One of the main proposals would make it easier to fill the government with Trump loyalists by reclassifying some 50,000 workers into jobs where they could be laid off – a revival of the so-called Annex F policy that Trump had tried to implement. place before leaving office. The idea is now central to the conservative vision of dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy that they accuse of blocking Trump’s priorities.

The rollout of Project 2025 on the founding’s 50th anniversary was also a debut of sorts for Roberts; he had previously been seen as an ally of Trump’s rival Ron DeSantis, who delivered the gala speech at the start of the presidential primary season.

“The conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next conservative administration,” Roberts said in the release. Heritage, he said, sought “to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel needed to dismantle the administrative state.”

When Project 2025 became a viral sensation

President Joe Biden’s campaign had warned early against the 2025 plan in social media posts before his State of the Union address in April, and House Democrats launched a group of work on the 2025 project to amplify their concerns in June. A few days later, comedian John Oliver made fun of it on his HBO show.

But it wasn’t until Biden’s dismal debate with Trump in June that Project 2025 had its viral moment.

It wasn’t so much what was said in the presidential debate as what wasn’t said: Biden didn’t even mention Project 2025, crushing the expectations of his allies who expected a coup of grace.

That weekend, a single thread about Project 2025 on X took off, garnering nearly 20 million views, according to the Democratic campaign. Actress Taraji P. Henson, who spoke with Vice President Kamala Harris during a segment on the BET Awards show, warned prime-time viewers: “The Project 2025 plan will not is not a game. Look it up!” And countless young TikTok creators speaking directly to their cameras explained the threat they believed Project 2025 posed to their civil rights, reproductive rights, and other rights in videos that went viral.

“This is truly a case of popular revolt,” said Joe Radosevich of the Center for American Progress. “They saw what was proposed as the outline of the race and completely rejected it.”

Especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that ended constitutional protections against abortion, Democrats and their allies wanted to demonstrate the impact the presidential election would have on people’s lives at home. future, rather than simply giving voters a choice between personalities. .

People wanted a debate about policies, Radosevich said, not an election “on atmosphere alone.”

At the end of June, Google searches for “Project 2025” exceeded searches for Taylor Swift and the NFL, according to the Harris campaign.

And by the time a giant replica of the Project 2025 book was hauled onstage to be ridiculed nightly at the Democratic National Convention, it wasn’t just celebrities and liberal conventioneers who made fun of it. Conservatives have begun accusing Heritage and Project 2025 of harming Trump’s electoral chances.

The 2025 project is criticized by Trump

Trump’s campaign never embraced the 2025 plan and actively avoided it, despite the closeness of people and policies familiar from the former president’s time in the White House.

Other conservative groups close to Trump are also preparing for a second term in the White House. The Trump campaign team had repeatedly warned Heritage to tone down its rhetoric and not present the 2025 project as part of the Trump campaign.

But Roberts appeared undeterred, even though he was criticized in July for suggesting, after the Supreme Court’s ruling granting the president broad immunity from prosecution for the Jan. 6 insurrection, that the country was in the midst of a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”

Trump came out forcefully against the 2025 plan a few days later.

“I don’t know anything about Project 2025,” Trump said on his own social media account. “I have no idea who is behind any of this. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are absolutely ridiculous and appalling. Whatever they do, I wish them well, but I have nothing to say to them.”

At the time, Trump was rolling out his own policy agenda ahead of the Republican National Convention, written in part by one of his former administration officials, conservative leader Russ Vought, who also contributed to the 2025 plan and its playbook of 180 days.

Heritage parted ways with Dans, the chief architect of the 2025 project, who resigned at the end of the month, a move that apparently pleased Trump’s team.

“Reports of Project 2025 being abandoned would be welcome and should serve as a warning to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign – this will not end well for you” Trump officials Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said. campaign managers, in a joint statement.

The future of the 2025 project

As the race for control of Congress tightens to the point where a single seat could determine which party controls the House or Senate, Project 2025 is being used by outside groups aligned with Democrats to portray Republicans as committed to its proposals. hard.

The House Accountability Project has created micro-websites for more than a dozen House Republicans holding some of the most contested seats, linking their past votes on abortion, government funding and other issues to the House’s proposals. 2025 project.

“As we speak, the House Republican Party is championing policies that are part of Blueprint 2025,” said Danny Turkel, spokesman for the House Accountability War Room. “They are already enforcing these policies at the Capitol.”

The House Republican Campaign Committee says its candidates have nothing to do with the 2025 plan, and that the attacks are concocted by Democrats to distract from their own border and inflationary policies.

“They fabricated a false attack based on something that House Republicans had never even read,” said Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He called the attacks a “desperate lie” as House Democrats “see their chances of regaining the majority dwindling.”